I have served since 2007 as Director of the Global Issues Initiative (GII) of Virginia Tech’s Institute for Society, Culture and Environment (ISCE) and have been on Faculty since 1983. My areas of interest emphasize the political economy of agriculture, international trade policy, and macroeconomic impacts on trade. I am actively engaged in research and public policy education programs on the economics and political economy of domestic support policies, international trade negotiations, and technical barriers to trade.

My research has focused on agricultural policies in a global context and the determinants and effects of various technical barriers to international agricultural trade and the resolution of trade disputes in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

American Agricultural Economics Association First-Place Award in the 21st Century Essay Competition, August 2001, for the article The New Century of Multiagriculturalism

American Agricultural Economics Association Quality of Communication Award, August 2000, for the Book: Policy Reform in American Agriculture: Analysis and Prognosis

Committee co-chair for the dissertation An Analysis of the Sources of Growth in French Agriculture, 1960-1984, by Frederic C. Bouchet, which received an American Agricultural Economics Association Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award, 1988

Bouët, Antoine, Simon Mevel, and David Orden. “More or less ambition in the Doha Round: Winners and losers from trade liberalization with a development perspective.” The World Economy 30:8 (2007): 1253-1280.

Orden, David, David Blandford and Tim Josling. “Determinants of Farm Policies in the United State,” in Political Economy of Distortions to Agricultural Incentives (Kym Anderson, editor), Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press and Washington D.C.: World Bank, 2010, pp. 162-190.

Orden, David; Blandford, David. “Farm Support Policies of the United States: Review and Prospects for Minimizing Production and Trade Distortions,” in Non-Distorting Farm Support to Enhance Global Food Production, Elbehri, Aziz; Sarris, Alexander (eds). Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2009, pp. 95-140.

Orden, David and Donna Roberts. “Food Regulation and Trade under the WTO: Ten Years in Perspective.” Plenary session paper in Contributions of Agricultural Economics to Critical Policy Issues: Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (Keijiro Otsuka and Kaliappa Kalirajan, eds). Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, pp. 103-118.